just a couple of shooting stars
by Sokudo Ningyou
Summary: Galaxia kept her promise, and led the star seeds back to their planets. But not all of the stories are happy. Finished ficlet; a freeflow piece, done in about 20 minutes.


just a couple of shooting stars.  
by sokudo ningyou  
notes at the end.

* * *

It was a nightmare she had never expected to escape from.  
That day in the schoolyard, she had been hovering on the precipice of despair and elation, certain that it would soon be the hour of her triumph - of her freedom. Surely, Galaxia-sama would have forgiven her everything once she came back, that brilliant star seed in her hand. In a way, Siren's death would have been avenged, because she, Crow, rival and confidante and partner, would have done it.  
And that bitch, that leather-clad, conniving Nyanko, had stolen her glory. The black hole's grip on her hands had been crushing, cruel, agony as it twisted her flesh and bone, giving her barely seconds to plead forgiveness from a ghost before she was pulled completely inside. A flash of stabbing, rending pain, and she had been released into a far colder void, drifting, lost. What she had heard referred to as purgatory, she had suspected, for all of her sins.  
But now she was opening her eyes. Moving her arms and legs.  
Breathing in the sweet air...it tasted like home.  
She was waking up, she realized, and she stared up into a leafy canopy overlapping like lace and patchwork above her head, still dripping from the morning rains. They came every day like clockwork during the warm cycles, finishing before the half day arrived with its gentle breezes. At end day, it would become dim, like the hours of Earthen twilight, with rolling fog down below and heavy, warm, still air above. Perfect for her winged people, who lived all their lives within the trees, who very rarely ever bothered with the ground.  
Home. Her home. Coronis, her beautiful world. She began to laugh, disbelieving her eyes, positive she was imaging the feeling of the raindrops in her hair. It wasn't possible, not when her world had been destroyed, systematically abused and torched by a golden queen who left nothing joyful in her wake. Galaxia had no use for citizens, merely seeds. Glittering star seeds.  
"Sailor Coronis?"  
A lovely woman was standing in front of her, quite possibly arriving out of thin air, smiling peacefully. She seemed unaware of her nudity, or perhaps comfortable with it; she was certainly pleasing to look at, all slender and shapely, her hair a waterfall of gold melting into copper. In her cupped hands was a shining, glittering seed. "Sailor Coronis," she said again.  
"Me? No, no, you've been mistaken...I renounced that title. In my error, I surrendered my planet and my people; I am no longer worthy to be the sailor soldier of Coronis. I became Sailor Lead Crow." Bitterly, she remembered that terrifying day, realizing she had made a deal with the devil; Galaxia's laughter filling her ears as the nesting of Corvus burned, her wrists chafing beneath their new gilded bracelets. The golden queen had mocked her, forcing her to watch.  
"You are Sailor Coronis of the planet Coronis," the woman stated, "reborn by the power of this star seed. As I was asked, I have begun to lead these star seeds back to their lives. Will you receive yours and take your place again? Or am I to release it to find a new body?"  
Lead Crow stood up, scraping her skin on the rough bark. They were standing on a wide, thick branch suitable for landing on, perhaps thousands of years old, still as healthy as the day she had stepped forward to greet the golden soldier who had arrived on their planet. She recognized with a dull shock that the trunk of the tree, at eye level, bore the symbolic scratches of her family; this was her clan's bough, destroyed at the very beginning. "Impossible," she whimpered, stepping back. "This is impossible. All of this was destroyed!"  
The bark was hurting her bare feet, grown soft and tender from incalculable time in uniform instead of toughened by running and landing and walking in these trees. She realized she, too, was naked as a nestling, her various scars over her arms from her queen's wrath completely gone. Reborn. "But I was lost within the black hole," she argued weakly, looking up at the woman still holding a - her - star seed.  
She nodded, looking suddenly sad. "You were. Your body was destroyed. And as it was I, in my folly, who led you into that fate, it is I who chose to give it back. Take your star seed, Sailor Coronis. I have more worlds to spare."  
"But who are you? Galaxia-sama is the one who tortured me cruelly and led me into despair! Who are you to offer me this gift back?" The woman tilted her head as if to say, _I see_. Then she closed her eyes.  
Lead Crow fell back onto the branch with a cry as the transformation flooded her senses, golden light hurting her eyes. She pressed her forehead against her face, blocking the deluge as it washed over her skin, tickling her nerves. But just as suddenly as it began was it over, and she lowered her arm to see her golden queen standing there, her expression one of exquisite patience. "Sailor Coronis," she said once more, and extended her hand with the seed.  
It appeared in Lead Crow's open palms, and she stared at it with wonder. How long had she dreamed of receiving it back, of feeling its amazing, unique power burn her blood and sing within her soul? She couldn't count the hours she had spent staring at it from Galaxia-sama's throne room, when her golden queen had still been active in the war, able to spot its rusty tint amongst the thousands. And here, Galaxia-sama was offering it back, had given it freely.  
She said the words.  
She felt the power.  
"I am Sailor Coronis."

That had been cycles ago.  
Since Galaxia-sama had left, a bright, shining star once again instead of a destructive supernova, Coronis had spend the time flying across her planet, searching for her people. Releasing her star seed and using its power to resurrect both body and soil had been the easy part; resurrecting the people had not been possible. Galaxia-sama had told her she had sensed a few life-signs taken refuge in the charcoal fields and sparse grasses that had been left behind, but not many. They had been the survivors of genocide, crippled beyond any chance for a return to their normal lives; there was no telling how the future generations had adapted.  
When she had found them, she had been shocked to see a sullen, nearly vicious clan with stunted wings and garbled language, hiding amongst the baby saplings that had managed to grown in the intervening cycles. It had taken exhausting days to convince them she was not some alien enemy, that she was in fact their guardian soldier reborn. That she had arrived timely along with the sudden regeneration of the trees, mythical foliage most of them had known only as passing legend, only helped her argument. Now they were attempting to move back up into them, giving up their lives on the ground to reclaim their ancestral homes.  
None of her clan had been among them.  
She had moved back into her home alone, feeling lost. Though the tree and its scratches, done so many cycles ago when the tree had been much younger, had been reborn, none of her family's possessions had come back with it. She had her memories, and they grew dimmer every passing cycle: her mother's smile and soft wings, her father with his stern ways and kind heart, her brood of sisters barely old enough to remember clearly.  
Many end days found her sitting on the side of her branch, watching the stars.  
She had been unprepared for the heaviness in her heart that came with the lack of mobility. Before Galaxia, she had been content to do nothing, as Coronis had been relatively calm for cycles upon cycles, and she had become its soldier when the former had committed suicide with her lover. And perhaps that her been her biggest fault when the golden queen had come calling; she had been a naïve, stupid nestling for all of her power. She had been taken from her soft life and thrown into one of constant travel and bickering and fighting, with barely the time to mourn, and then, later, to regret, and finally, to forget.  
The bracelets had given her power and madness; she had become an angry, sharp-tongued, dismissive soldier, with no will to truly fight for her freedom. Galaxia-sama had given her orders, and she had followed them, taking delight in her willful destruction. As well, there was also the constant fear that she could fail, and that her golden queen would take away those bonds and with it her life; and so there was no planet she wouldn't destroy, no fellow soldier she would not dupe and callously murder.  
Except for Siren.  
Siren.  
She thought about Siren.  
The blue-haired soldier had once been Sailor Mermaid, from the nearby planet Mermaid, circling their mother star. But as Mermaid, she had been possessed of a particular wit and savage charm, almost the opposite of the calm, rather shy Coronis. Made friends by circumstance, they had truly been rivals back then, each trying to be stronger, better, prettier, the star of their planet. "You may be free once the wind calls," Mermaid often told her, mocking her wings, "but swoop too low and I can always catch you"  
"But if I ever came down, it would be to catch you instead," she'd retort.  
It was always that way. Coronis, with her wings, ruled the sky, whilst Mermaid, who lived on an oceanic planet, could swim faster than the fish once she extended the webbing retracted between her toes and fingers. But they were sailor soldiers, and understood one another better than anyone else.  
Mermaid had not been tricked as easily as she. At the end she had fought, screaming, as Galaxia had taken her star seed and bound her with the bracelets, and something had been irrevocably broken by the encounter. When Lead Crow had found her, she had been confused as to who she was, as to her own identity; and Galaxia had remarked, finding it amusing, "Perhaps the silver mermaid has now become as worthless as aluminum. Most pitiful." So she had become Aluminum Siren, a slow and childish soldier, easily directed into war.  
But Lead Crow had never forgotten their rivalry, and she had used it at first to viciously taunt, and then, at the end, to cajole the blue-  
haired soldier into becoming more like herself, to fight back and find her strength...and what had that accomplished? Perhaps if she had not pushed so hard, Siren wouldn't have gone on her own to take Eternal Sailor Moon's star seed, she wouldn't have failed miserably, and she wouldn't have died...pleading, crying...in her arms, turning to dust.  
Surely now she was alive, once more Sailor Mermaid, perhaps alone on a world that had been rendered lifeless, as Galaxia had superheated the oceans to boiling. Perhaps she was even now sitting on one of the floating isles, staring at the stars the same as she, wondering...perhaps whole and healthy and completely Mermaid again, no longer the idiot Siren with her vacant smile.  
A sound disturbed her thoughts, and she fluffed her wings instinctively, poised for both flight and fright as she pushed up onto her feet to face the interloper. Though she couldn't understand why she was unsurprised to see it was Mermaid. "Sire-" she began, then stopped, saying instead, "Sailor Mermaid."  
"Coronis." They stared at one another.  
What do you say to your partner in crime of countless years?  
"I decided to see if...well. If you were reborn as well," Mermaid explained warily, gesturing with her hands, a Siren trait. "Galaxia-  
sam-Sailor Galaxia merely said she was on a mission to return us all properly."  
"I was." Coronis relaxed her wings, folding them once more behind her back. She realized that she had dropped her hand to her waist, where her whip had once been tied, but that had been a toy she had picked up on some distant planet, not her standard weapon. Consequently, it was no longer at her side, and a habit she would need to break. "Is your world healthy?"  
Mermaid smiled bitterly. "What would you expect? How many tender creatures could survive a boiling ocean, when most cannot even survive above water? Everyone I ever cared for is gone; not even their bones remain." Her eyes drifted pointedly to the leaves above their heads, the full-grown trees surrounding them, the distant speech of the survivors, and then back, accusingly, to Coronis. She had nothing to say to that.  
The wind picked up, signaling the approaching cold cycle, which always came quite suddenly. By early day, it would be chilly, and the gentle rains would be tinkling ice. Already she was shivering, unaccustomed to the sudden change even with her protective magic. "Is that why you truly came, Mermaid?" she asked finally, determined not to be cowed as she stared right back. Perhaps so many cycles of being the strong one, the leader, had given her what she thought was the right to be so bold. "To justify your suffering? So many of my people have died as well, and for the survivors? If they can adjust to these new lives above the ground, it will be a triumph indeed! None of them can even fly properly!"  
"At least they've survived!" Mermaid snapped back, clenching her fists. "I defend a solitary world of ghosts and silence!"  
"At least you don't have the agony of watching those few survivors most likely die! You've been spared that"  
"Bird!"  
"Fish!"  
Mermaid was shaking as she put her head in her hands. After a minute, Coronis realized she was laughing, though it sounded far too desperate to be hilarity. "Coronis," she gasped, beating at her head with her fists. "Oh, Coronis, this is mad. What good is it for her to give us back our lives when we've no one to protect? What use is a sailor soldier on an empty planet? Tell me! TELL ME!" she screamed.  
"I don't know," Coronis whispered, looking off into the distance towards the flicker of firelight. Having adapted to life on the ground, with the constant cold fog and lack of true protection, they had discovered fire as a heat source. Now, up in the trees, she had been facing difficulty convincing them they didn't need it, as they also cooked - cooked! - their food with it, when they should have eaten it properly raw. If they didn't accidentely burn their tree down, they would probably die trying to climb down to the surface to find their preferred food source; two males had already fallen. Galaxia had done her duty in returning them, as she had promised Eternal Sailor Moon. But had she taken responsibility for all the lives she had destroyed? How many worlds must have been left so abandoned, their soldiers waking up to find themselves essentially useless? They may as well have been shooting stars, left to wander and find new worlds.  
But maybe that was a good thing.  
Maybe that was destiny after all; to move on, to spread peace throughout the universe with their song. They had been essentially freed of these particular responsibilities, and they could always come back.  
"Siren," she said, smiling suddenly with a manic glee. "Is that the way for my rival to react? After all of this, are you still worthy to be my rival? Because my rival wouldn't be like the rock sunken to the bottom of the ocean, but like the fleetest of fish, too fast to be caught."  
Mermaid stared up at her.  
"My rival would meet any challenge, no matter how far we go to prove who's right. My rival would be the hero I try to be, and better, making me work twice as hard to reach that height. My rival would be my shadow and my light and my partner at the very end, as fast in the water as I am in the air."  
"And you may be free once the wind calls, but swoop too low and I can always catch you." Coronis saw her smile mirrored on Mermaid's face and laughed, utterly joyous. "But if I ever came down, it would be to catch you instead."

"Ara, Mamo-chan, look, look! Two shooting stars just went by, at the same time. I've never seen that before." She pointed for his benefit, though they had long disappeared.  
He just smiled and held her closer. "That's very unusual, Usa. Did you make a wish? You'd get to make two of them for two stars."  
She laughed, leaning up to whisper something in his ear that reddened his cheeks. Then she said, "It doesn't matter, does it? And happiness is always my hope for the future for everyone. I've got everything I could ever wish for."  
Neither of them noticed the two stars pass by again, minutes later, as if in a race across the sky. After all, all those stars looked so much alike...so very, very many of them.

**Fin.**

* * *

Notes -

Ok, obviously, this has nothing to do withmy epic,Pretty Soldiers. It was just an idea I had swimming in my head for a while, that I finally said "screwit" to and wrote out. It's also likely to be the only anime story I write, unless I get some other random urge.  
Mostly, this just came out of me watching Stars and getting pissed; I mean, c'mon, that's a serious exercise in stretching credibility. And I got to wondering just what would happen if Crow and Siren met up again after Galaxia returned their seeds and they were no longer wackos. The mere fact that they were supposedly rivals had to make it interesting. Also, the anime never mentions that they possibly weren't their planets' actual soldiers, which means their rivalry could've existed from before their tenure as Galaxia's puppets, possibly when Siren still had a clue. So I banged this up in an hour's time on a whim. Sorry I forgot the lesbianism this time. Maybe next story.


End file.
